The most suitable supervisor is on his full capacity of PhD students, he can only be my 2nd supervisor. I cannot find a 1st supervisor. And I don't want change university.

Any advice?

How many students one supervisor can have normally?

======= Date Modified 03 Feb 2010 07:08:54 =======
Hi Bunytu

Different universities have different policies on this, but your intended supervisor may well have reached his maximum. What exactly is your situation, have you been taken on and now had your supervisor back out, or are you currently looking for a studentship? Is there no one else in the department/university whose research would be relevant enough to supervise you?

if the MOST SUITABLE supervisor agrees to be your 2nd supervisor, why not.
The best thing is that you have THE MOST SUITABLE person in your team.
Multiple supervisors have a lot of advantages. The strenuous part is when you send in a piece of work and all the comments start coming in, then you might have a headache. BUT---as long as you have a principle supervisor to hold the reins, you will be ok.

if I were you, and dont want to change university, I'd quickly grab this MOST SUITABLE supervisor. No 2 is better than zero.

regards satchi

I would be a little bit cautious about settling for him as your 2nd supervisor- if he doesn't have the time to be your first supervisor then I'm guessing if he's your second supervisor then he's going to have even less time for you. In my experience it is the primary supervisor who does the most for you, sees you for supervision, checks your work, keeps track of where you're at and advises on your research. Often the second supervisor is only really there for back up if the other leaves or goes on study leave etc. I don't often see my second supervisor, but then I don't need to as my primary supervisor is great and gives me all the support I need. So in your position if he can't be your primary supervisor then I would ask him to jointly supervise you with someone else and check that he is still willing to be involved in your project and not just taking a very back seat. It's really important to have a supervisor who is there for you and has enough time to support you properly, as well as being in the right field etc. Good luck with it, KB

I'm in the application stage. The supervisor I want most told me that he is available as 2nd supervisor at most. He is enthusiastic about the topic, and would like to give advice even he is not my supervisor. (thought i know he is very busy normally.)

The topic I want to do is rather new. there are another two suitable supervisors in another university but I really don't want to move there.

Do you guys know whether I will get admitted if there is only a 2nd supervisor? I have the impression that the applicant must identify a supervisor before hand?

My plan is to get a 1st supervisor as the nominal 1st supervisor, and the 2nd supervisor as my main resource. Is it viable?

I really wouldn't assume that your preferred supervisor will be able to act in reality as first supervisor if they are not on paper. Universities set maximum numbers of PhD students per person for a reason - that's all they can manage along with the rest of their workload. Also if the person's a nice individual, they probably won't want to undermine their colleague by usurping their role as main supervisor.